Shifting Gears (400)

[The Judge]

Let's not hijack ASF's Critiques thread, chaps. By all means continue the discussion, but best if it's taken elsewhere. Thanks.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I'm hearing it sounds like this description is painful enough as written and should only be used once to introduce the concept (if at all). After that simply say "they jump into hyperspace...or the wormhole" as not to lose the momentum of the story.

To be honest my eyes glazed over at the amount of techo-detail in this extract, but I don't read hard SF for that reason.

There are two ways of dealing with this kind of exposition. The first is to frontload things, so you introduce the concept and give the explanation you think it needs -- whether that is about FTL travel or a specific type of magic -- and thereafter just refer to it as going through the wormhole or whatever. The second is to give that info in dribs, so each time you sent them into warp drive you give another nugget deaing with another aspect of it. I'd usually prefer the latter method, but it very much depends on what information you need to get out there in order for it to be understood. If, indeed, it needs to be understood. Personally, I don't explain the workings of the internal combustion engine if my characters drive a car, so I feel no urge to explain warp drive when they're in a star-ship.

 

[ShotokanXL]

More so than Footfall: Niven's Moties or more so his Ringworld Series

Yes, Jerry Pournelle on Footfall and The Mote in God's Eye

Yeah, though the bad attempt at a Scottish accent in Mote both annoyed and tickled me at the same time (I'm Scottish)

 

[ShotokanXL]

Let's not hijack ASF's Critiques thread, chaps. By all means continue the discussion, but best if it's taken elsewhere. Thanks.

To be honest my eyes glazed over at the amount of techo-detail in this extract, but I don't read hard SF for that reason.

There are two ways of dealing with this kind of exposition. The first is to frontload things, so you introduce the concept and give the explanation you think it needs -- whether that is about FTL travel or a specific type of magic -- and thereafter just refer to it as going through the wormhole or whatever. The second is to give that info in dribs, so each time you sent them into warp drive you give another nugget deaing with another aspect of it. I'd usually prefer the latter method, but it very much depends on what information you need to get out there in order for it to be understood. If, indeed, it needs to be understood. Personally, I don't explain the workings of the internal combustion engine if my characters drive a car, so I feel no urge to explain warp drive when they're in a star-ship.

Oops. Sorry!

 

[Avid Scifi Fan]

Thanks Judge, but its ok.

I think I got the answers I was looking for at this point. Ray metioned what I think is key to the issue. Its why there are three drives, not how they operate or the power they consume.

I like the analogy of the car's engine. That makes sense. I'm not aiming for hard sci-fi because I know there are too many other items that stretch the bounds of science and the rules that go with it. I just want to make it somewhat beleivable and not turn off a reader with pure science fantasy.

 

[tinkerdan]

I see no problem with the info dump; but I think you might want to look at defining the extent of your AI and its abilities.

By that I mean that it either has no personality or some sort of personality that might be defined by how and what it sees; feels; smells; tastes; and hears. It does all of these in some way even if its an absence such as smell and taste, otherwise the colors of space flight would not be a problem because the ships point of view wouldn't be describing those. In the same token what it sees might not be the same as what we see.

If your ships AI is going to be a prevalent POV you might want to give it personality. If it has none then it should show up less or you will really be raking the readers over the coals.

 

[ralphkern]

Ion drives are used today and they have a very low acceleration. The positive in this being that they can 'burn' for a long time, thus actually providing more of a change in velocity (delta V) than a conventional liquid or solid fuel engine.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

As a hard SF fan, if you were to use an ion thruster in some kind of capacity where it is a quick way of getting around a star system (your version of a Star Trek Impulse Drive) I would assume you hadn't done your homework. You'd be better off calling it simply a fusion or antimatter drive. That would satisfy me, as a reader, that it's a reasonably quick sunlight engine that can get people from say Earth to Mars in a few weeks (possibly days in the case of AM if you were willing to live with higher G).

 

[ralphkern]

Also, a galaxy is a big place: the best guess at the moment suggests 400000000000 (400 billion) stars. Is there any real need to go to other galaxies? Even if the caperbility was there? Although if you decided to use wormholes, it might be easier to get to another galaxy than across our own. But there would have to be a reasoning as to why a wormhole would handily go from one system in one Galaxy to another system in another galaxy. After all, most terminus of wormholes would likely be floating uselessly in intergalactic space.

 

[ShotokanXL]

Have you read Dan Simmons' "Hyperion' novels? He tackkes the notion of travelling vast distances in a pretty believable way.

 

[Hex]

Hey, you guys,

I don't want to spoil your discussion, but try to keep the Crits thread for Crits, and comments on the text.

I know this discussion's related, but it might be best as a Lounge or General Book Discussion discussion rather than in a Crits thread.

Thanks

 

[Ray McCarthy]

As a hard SF fan, if you were to use an ion thruster in some kind of capacity where it is a quick way of getting around a star system

The current ones are low acceleration because:

1. No big powered linear accelerator.
2. Lack of onboard power.
3. Limited amount of low density reaction mass (usually Xenon)

Any Ion drive to accelerate decently is going to be 1 km to 10km long and Nuclear or Fusion powered. It's a similar principle to current Ion drive, but a radically different implementation we can't afford to launch right now.

Getting 2G thrust is only a matter of having power + Big Linear Accelerator. Plasma can be ejected at over 0.9C and be derived from water (and perhaps helium waste from Fusion generator) rather than Xenon.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Sorry ...

By all means continue the discussion, but best if it's taken elsewhere.

General Book Discussion discussion

What about moving all the comments that are not direct Crits into Writers Resource Thread (Spaceship Propulsion & Civilisations thoughts?)

 

[Michael F]

Hi All,

Need an oppinion on this thought: Should I only introduce the travel once with this much detail in the story and there after simply refer to the use of ion thrusters, hyperdrive or wormhole? or should I describe it a few times (might get too repetative).
the strongest of all power generation equipment available

will stick only to what you ask an opinion on.
1. What I read was entertaining and enjoyable.
2. As a reader I am sure that you as the author will elaborate as the story progresses
3. Technical detail in every aspect of life i normally better for being repeated a few times perhaps in slightly different ways.
Summary - I think you already know best howand when best to introduce the technicalities.
M

 

[tinkerdan]

To a large degree I find I'm in agreement with Hex in that somehow this thread was hijacked from the get go.

To get back to the OP and the question asked I would like to reiterate that I don't think it will hurt to have all that at the beginning; but there is something about this piece that will hurt and that is that somehow I get the impression that Maggie will figure into the story like a character and my thought is that rather than dominate the piece with the fancy science you should consider strongly dominating it with the creation of traits that will show the reader what Maggie might be all about and you can use that by stringing in the pieces of this wonderful science through the narrative that introduces Maggie.

As it is the narrative is introducing the science as if it's a character in the story.
That's just my opinion.

I do understand that to some degree Maggie is the science; but to a larger degree she is not because she uses the science, something made evident by her moving from one set of science to another perhaps based on need.

Her acumen and attitude with the science help define the parts of the story that will make this interesting ;contrary to a large number of misconceptions that dazzling the reader with the science is going to make up for poor writing skills.

 

[Avid Scifi Fan]

I acknowledge that my skills need to be pollished a bit more and I'm working on that issue. Fortunately this is just a hobby for me and I'm not trying to live of the fruits of my labor (good thing too...). You have all been great help in pointing out some obvious mistakes I've made and I do plan to address them by updating my writing.

Yes, Maggie is a minor character that works with the other major characters, so I'm not sure how much of a spotlight to give her. Her mind is the AI program running in computer core the the ship is like her body/house, so she can be moved from one ship to the next.

Thanks Again.

 

[Bowler1]

The writing was ok this time, still detached emotionally but as it's a ship this time I guess it doesn't matter so much. It was a fairly large section on how a ship works and was pushing my tolerance on info dumping a lot, and I like SciFi info dumping, so something to consider. Otherwise interesting.

However...

100 billion

• 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) stars in the Milky Way, and 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. The average number of planets around each star was ~2.5.

Why travel between galaxies as if a galaxy was a single point of arrival? Our Milky Way has 100 billion star systems, so a galaxy is not a small place.

Here are their distances from us: Large Magellanic Cloud - 179 thousand light years away Small Magellanic Cloud - 210 thousand light-years away Andromeda Galaxy - 2.9 million light-years away One light year is the distance that light travels in one year in a vacuum at a speed of 186,000 miles per second or about ...

Our Galaxy is 100,000 light years across and our nearest neighbour is 179,000,000 light years away - so you see my problem as you whizz around Galaxy after Galaxy. I'm baffled as to why a ship would alter its course with a Galaxy that should be 200,000,000 light years away from it's present position, more so as the light from that said Galaxy should be 200,000,000 years old and of little use when setting a new course. I won't even start into the time problems your super faster than light travel brings about (an idea for a plot comes to life). In the simplest terms, what is wrong with the 100 billion star systems in the Milky Way for storyline settings that you have to shot off to other galaxies? How many planets do you need? So I have some issues over your sense of scale and simply put, my sense of disbelief is pushed beyond what I normally expect from SciFi books the moment you power up your spaceship. Bear in mind however that there is nothing wrong with intergalactic travel if that is what you want, lots of writers have used this very successfully. It does bother me however, but it wouldn't stop me reading a good story when I get down to the brass tax.

 

[tinkerdan]

If Maggie is to be a minor character in the story then perhaps she's not the one through which you should present the science [in whatever form that science takes or wants to exist in this story]. Personally I think that Maggie would be a great way to showcase the world and the technology; but only if she's vastly important to the story. That could be my opinion leaking through so with a grain of salt here.

If she is a minor character then maybe you should dampen this a bit and put the more meaty pieces into a portion of the narrative that contains someone who you want people to relate to. That's the one to introduce us to the world they live in. Although if you create an omniscient POV with some character you could possibly create the desired effect. But that POV would have to be interesting and engaging and able to introduce the elements that bring the reader the sight, sound, taste, feel and the very touch that will bring the story to life.

And though I'd love to join the discussion about how the universe works, it skirts closely around the issue of critics criticizing other critics since the comments here should all be critiques and other critics shouldn't be responding to the critiques.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Our Galaxy is 100,000 light years across and our nearest neighbour is 179,000,000 light years away

Eh?
There are 3 Galaxies less than 100k LY from Earth. The Milky way LONGEST axis is about 100k LY
About 14 Galaxies are less than 500K LY away.

Andromeda is merely the nearest similar Galaxy. About 2,500k LY away and is part of a cluster of 19 Galaxies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies

179,000k LY away is very far, loads of nearer Galaxies.

Space is really big. But if you have the Interstellar thingymagob to traverse the longest axis of our own Galaxy, visiting the "Neighbouring" Galaxies probably isn't a big deal.

Unless you are doing a scientific paper or an encyclopaedia, it's best to present only science absolutely needed to be understood to follow plot etc.
See Status Culture by Robert Sheckley (Someone asks the Hero about the Starship and he makes it up!)

 

[Bowler1]

I stand corrected, Andromeda is only 2.5 million light years away, so I'm off by a factor of ten. Clearly Google has it in for me today!

 

[The Bravest Newbie]

You should only need to describe it once in full detail. The amount of detail you use depends on your story. Are you making a character and plot driven story? Or a classic theoretical science driven story? If its the former then you should just give us the basics summarized. If its the latter then I think you should be ready to make up some scientific theories and go into vastly more detail.